The theme of the month is magical thinking. Mainly, we’re thinking we can perform magic. We threaten each other with curses.
Are we mad at Seana for tossing garbage into the Sound? No, of course not. We’re mad at the poster for arranging the garbage and taking a picture.
One person says, “The fact you touched this to lay it out and take a picture is disgusting. As annoying as littering is, you could find way better use of your time. Just be quiet, throw it away & move on.”
Why are people like this? It’s a cute post reminding people not to litter, and then someone throws a tantrum in the comments. We shouldn’t turn on each other like this. Instead, we should be judging Seana’s dietary choices. She had a 20 ounce caramel macchiato? Might as well just drink the sugar water people put in hummingbird feeders.
The anonymous commenter keeps trolling, so someone clicks on their profile and finds out they are from Fort Worth, Texas. We have an interloper causing drama! A true Vashonite says, “I am just going to block them.”
Another asks, “How’s Fort Worth, Texas treating you? Do they have Facebook groups there?”
The anonymous Texan commenter says, “still not blocked baby.” Then, a few minutes later adds, ”it’s been 3 hours.”
The commenters then get into an argument about who is triggered, what it means to be triggered, what the signs of being triggered are. It’s exhausting. You guys, go outside. Go pick up some trash or something.
Someone adds, “I thought Arby’s was just for laundering money, had no idea anyone actually went there and bought food.” It’s true. The garbage is all a ruse. Before the poster got there, there’d been ten thousand dollars in unmarked bills inside the cup.
One person says it’s not Seana’s fault, but rather an act of defiance against a cruel and uncaring world. They say, “Feelings of powerlessness and disenfranchisement can be manifested in acts of civil disobedience such as littering or public urination, property crimes such as graffiti and theft. As a community this reflects on us all. How can we help Seana to respect her community and respect herself?”
As someone who, when I step out of my car, is occasionally flanked by a few stray chip bags that get caught by the wind and majestically float away, I have a suggestion. We could buy her some trash bags.
Seanna is not the only person who is cursed. We have this hex:
Maybe the red jeep is driven by Seana. She had an iced caramel macchiato, so her coffee was cold. She went to Arby’s because Thriftway and IGA didn’t have the food she wanted, and she was buying food at the grocery store because the protein powder she ordered in the mail got stolen. And lastly, she threw her waste into the sea because she was mad that she missed the ferry.
We have yet another hex.
One member asks, “Which gas station?
Another member asks, “Which toe?”
We want to know why the poster didn’t do anything. It turns out they weren’t there, but someone showed them a video of the interaction later. This creates more questions than it answers. Who took the video? Why didn’t that person intervene? Why did they show the poster the video? If the video exists, why aren’t they trying to contact the victim in case she needs it for a restraining order or something? Why are people even posting online instead of going out into the world? Why do I have to read the words of angry posters with my eyes, which evolved over countless eons so that I may behold a sunset? What are we even doing you guys?
Besides hexing each other, we’re also losing stuff. For example:
Losing my phone would be like getting a lobotomy. It contains all my notes and contacts. Without it, I’d have no idea who anyone was, or what my AllRecipes password is, and I wouldn’t be able to play Block Blast or Gem Quest.
I’d be free. Please, someone steal my phone.
And speaking of fond memories getting lost:
I hate to say this, but if someone sees a dead mouse, they probably won’t pick it up to check if it’s a hair clip. More likely they would take a picture of it and post it on facebook and wish a pox on the store they found it in for not properly eliminating pests.
I do hope the kid gets her hair clip back, though.
We’re searching for more than just skinned mouse hair clips. We also need hot peppers. In exchange, we are offering pornographic vegetables.
We have the following comments:
“I came to say ‘am I the only one that’s seeing this?!’ ” No, we are all seeing this. And we are going bananas.
“Scary dog penises”
“Is that a PEEN on my screen?!?”
“Weenie peppers!”
“Peter Pepper”
“Suddenly…’hot and spicy’ takes on a whole new meaning.”
“Sorry I only eat kosher peppers.” I would like to thank this person for having the same thought I had, which was, ‘Are those peppers circumcised?’
I wonder if the poster ever got the chilis they need?
And it wouldn’t be facebook without us complaining that things used to be better. One person posts, “Beachcomber needs to bring back the damn Sheriff’s Report,” along with this screenshot from 2012:
We reminisce about our favorite crimes. Here are some we remember:
“My favorite is when they described an errant fellow as having a VSHHOLE sticker on his car!”
“I will never forget that a shoplifter at Thriftway was busted with a can of clams. Which I’ll take over poachers any day.”
“Anyone recall the one that was an elderly woman that found a laser in her basement or something”
“My favorite was the house that was broken into and was found to be missing the ingredients for a banana split.”
“One of the best was the sheriff’s report ‘Vashon Cemetery reported the dirt was stolen from a recent grave excavation’. Now that takes some chutzpah and some future bad karma.”
“Anyone remember the ‘There are no stop signs on Vashon’ chase where she peed in the cops hat after arrest?”
I need some context on this last one. How did she get a hold of the cop’s hat? Was she in the back of the cop car and she snagged it off his head? Did she do this while handcuffed?
I logged onto the Beachcomber and went through their archive to try to find the sheriff’s briefs. I didn’t find any, but I did find an article called “Rat Control is Simply a Matter of Linguistics” about a man who went into his crawl space and barked at rats.
Things were better in the past, and they are also better in other places, as illustrated by the following post:
“European Americans” is Boer erasure. Just kidding, I don’t care if someone calls me white or European American. Actually, being called European sounds kinda cool. Like I have a baguette popping out of my grocery bag and I smoke a pack of Gauloises cigarettes every day.
Most of the comments explain all the reasons why city composting wouldn’t be economical or practical on island.
One person says, “We USE the compost we make here- plant a garden or go on the Vashon Free Barter etc FB page and offer it up.”
I love the idea of going on facebook and being like, who wants my banana peels and egg shells? Mostly because you know a bunch of people will be like, ‘please enter my name in the drawing’.
One person says, “Worms eat my garbage, and my chickens too.”
A person responds, “I had to read your post a couple of times…on first read, “worms ate your chickens””. This elicits the comment, “Vashon has Mongolian death worms now.” The Mongolian death worms can eat the soiled paper that the poster wants to compost. Perfect solution!
A bunch of people tell the poster to move back to Burien. This is the go-to response when people post a rant on the rants page. A knee-jerk defensiveness that Vashon is great and anyone who doesn’t like it should leave. I think the same people who feel this way are also the people who think Vashon sucks now and wish it could revert to the way it was 30 years ago. Maybe it could be like Brigadoon and just disappear into the mist.
A commenter calls out these killjoys. They say, “To everyone saying ‘move back to Burien,’ calm down. We are allowed to love Vashon while calling for improvements. And outside (newcomer) perspectives are valuable. Isn’t that what makes the ‘melting pot’ of America special? Isn’t that why companies often hire CEO’s from outside the company instead of from within? Isn’t that why we don’t marry our effing cousins?”
Henceforth, anyone who complains about newcomers will be referred to as cousin boinker. No need to argue with them. Just as soon as they post “Go back to Renton you urban elitist!” you can just say, “ok whatever cousin boinker lol” and move on with life.
The thing that always comes up when people reminisce is the mud bogs. One person says,
“Vashon isn’t what it used to be, that’s for sure. When the yearly mud bog event went away, it went downhill from there!”
Someone responds, “Wait, yearly mud bog? I have been here forty years and never heard of this. What did I miss? Why is it not still a thing? How do we bring it back? Are there leeches?”
Here’s a screenshot from a video someone posted. It sounds like people drove in mud, drank beer and played music. There were no leeches, but there were likely many mosquitoes.
Speaking of reminiscing on the past, an observant poster (one who has definitely not incurred any brain damage from repeated covid infections) is able to recognize what year it is.
One person makes this astute comment: “…and that’s why we have a COVID surge.”
I had covid for the first time in May, and it sucked. I was so tired and so very, very stupid. I had weird symptoms. My hands were sweaty all the time. Like, not just my palms. My entire hands. And my eyeballs hurt. They always felt like I’d been staring at a bright light. Even when I hadn’t been watching garbage reality tv for hours straight.
I can’t get covid again. I’ve run out of seasons of America’s Next Top Model, and they’re not making any more. So please, wear a mask, pick up your trash, and be on the lookout for a dead mouse that’s actually a hair clip.
Author: Anna Shomsky
I'm a former teacher and a data engineer living on Vashon Island. My writing has appeared in Five on the Fifth, Women on Writing and on the Post-Culture Podcast. I wrote and produced the radio show Whispers of Vashon for 101.9 KVSH. I’ve had short stories published in the anthologies Island Stories and Chicken Scratchings, as well as through the Open Space Literary Project.
